Forced pooling means drillers are allowed to remove natural gas from beneath properties of owners who refuse to lease their mineral rights.

Most dramatic was what happened when Ronald Ramsey of the Nature Conservancy attempted to amend the impact fee proposal to extend its benefits to long-term and even statewide impacts. Ramsey attempted to insert language that would have put some of the fee toward the Environmental Stewardship Fund to cover hard-to-quantify impacts to land, forest and water resources and outdoor recreation.

Over the course of more than 30 minutes, representatives of the governor’s office, the industry and local government inexorably removed every word from Ramsey’s proposal that would make it significantly different from the original, which was written by a committee that included the most active local government representative and the representative from the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

They began with the Environmental Stewardship Fund, with Secretary of Agriculture George Greig wondering aloud if it even existed in Lycoming County. Sending money to that fund would violate the governor’s charge to the commission, Ramsey was told. He relented.

The discussion moved to semantics, and word after word, Ramsey relented.

Once the amendment had been trimmed to meet the satisfaction of gas industry representatives and the governor’s appointees, it was adopted.

But when Ramsey attempted to question the scope of another provision that would prevent local governments from adopting ordinances that would “impede” natural gas development, Lt. Governor Jim Cawley said it was not pre-emptive and sternly reminded Ramsey that the recommendations would have to go through the legislative and regulatory process.

“Remember Ron, this isn’t going to be the be-all-end-all,” said Cawley.

Ramsey relented.

Jan Jarrett, president of the environmental group PennFuture, Tweeted from the audience "Enviros just being rolled."

They didn’t roll silently though.

Just before the impact fee passed unanimously, Matt Ehrhart of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said, “Just for a moment, I’m going to jump squarely on the third rail... I think there are a number of benefits to an impact tax that have been lost” in the commission’s singular focus on a local fee.

Ehrhart urged that future discussion of the issue examine closely the benefits in the structural differences between the fee proposed and a tax.

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